Sacrifice

Today is the 30th day of my Daniel fast. I have just eaten fruits, vegetables and whole grains for a month. It was Ben's idea to fast and pray, especially for mom and dad for breakthroughs. It has been a powerful time that has yielded some big fruit in my life, pun totally intended. My latest revelation came this week. I was reading to the kids the story of Abraham offering Issac as a sacrifice. I was so struck that this fast has been about sacrifice. Taking what we value and telling God to have it, that we value Him more. Its not that we didn't want to eat meat or sugar or dairy, but that we wanted to know God and His will for our lives more. I guess I just didn't have too much of a personal testimony of sacrifice, which is crazy, I have given up lots of things for God, yet this time, it is so different. I am not anxious to go back to eating the way I was because I am not anxious to stop telling God how valuable he is. I asked J to take this picture of me this morning because I felt this was the picture in my head of what this fast has meant to me. Holding up high an offering to God and telling him, here is my gift to you. J and I were talking, while eating our vegetable soup for lunch, about the sacrifice God made in sending Jesus to die. Jesus's sacrifice was amazing to leave Heaven and the tangible presence of God to put on human form and live without sin to die for our sins. That is beyond amazing and we will spend eternity telling him how amazing that is. And yet God too, gave up having his Son in Heaven, whom he had shared Heaven with from eternity past. And then when Jesus was on the cross, He had to turn away while Jesus took our punishment. Abraham shows us that picture of laying down your son. Oh I am just so struck by the God the Father's love for us. I was listening to a song this morning that says is simply, "He loves us, Oh, how he loves us." It is so striking and so humbling. So I continue to hold high everything and tell God, yes.